


Now Winter Nights Enlarge

by 1863



Category: Original Work
Genre: Extra Treat, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-23 21:24:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17691338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1863/pseuds/1863
Summary: He watched them, sometimes, as the ice crept over their skin and the wind swept away their alien warmth. But he’d never followed one before, not until now.What a strange, fascinating creature.





	Now Winter Nights Enlarge

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kaydel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaydel/gifts).



He waits until the man has collapsed, fallen to his knees in the deep soft snow that he blankets the forest with for most of the year. He’s surprised the man has lasted so long; the few others who ventured this far north usually succumbed far earlier—from the cold, from despair, from the terror of a wilderness they did not understand. This man’s strength is... intriguing, and intrigue is something he hasn’t felt often in the course of his endless, immeasurable existence.

He comes closer, fascinated by the way the man’s skin is so pale but also bright with colour in certain spots; a wash of pink high on his cheekbones and the tip of his nose, sweeping over the curve of his strange, rounded ears. A face is all he can see, the rest of his body wrapped in precise pieces of black and white fabric, his head covered by an odd-looking hat—tall and black and flat at the top, with a gently curving brim. 

He leans down, curious. The others that have come here had all been dressed differently, swathed in thick layers of wool that made them seem like great lumbering beasts, crashing through the woods with awkward, heavy steps and making so much noise that it had been easy to avoid them, and easier still to leave them to their fates. He watched them, sometimes, as the ice crept over their skin and the wind swept away their alien warmth. But he’d never followed one before, not until now.

Perhaps it was because of the way this man moved—with an odd gracefulness, a softness in his step that seemed to show a certain respect for the fact that he and his kind were as helpless as children here.

The man stirs, eyes flickering open. Another surprise, then. In his experience, once a man’s eyes closed here they would never open again. He leans down further, face tingling with the weakening warmth radiating from the man’s skin. What a strange, fascinating creature.

“What—”

The man scrambles back and snow flurries all around him, powdery and white, settling over his clothes and skin and making him look just a little less alien. His breath blossoms in the air, hard laboured puffs that turn into pretty, delicate clouds, and yes, he thinks, yes—the longer the man stays here, the more beautiful he becomes. 

“What,” the man repeats. His eyes are wide and blue as the sky on the clearest of mornings, when the snow has already fallen and the sun reclaims its throne. He swallows. “What are you?”

An unexpected question. He tilts his head, considering. 

“This,” he answers. “The trees that guard you, the snow that cradles you, the air that gives you life.” 

The man stares. He stares back. 

“Your voice,” the man says. “It sounds like—” He shakes his head. “I don’t know what it sounds like. The wind between mountains, or when icicles fall from the eaves.”

“Is it unpleasant?”

The man looks surprised. “No,” he says quickly. “Not at all.” A pause. “My name is Thomas, sir,” he adds. “Do you… do you have a name?” 

“Many.”

And another surprise comes, when Thomas looks up at him and smiles. It does something strange to his eyes, makes them glitter like early morning frost on the leaves. 

“What shall I call you, then?” 

He considers this. He has names that have been whispered in fear, when he froze the earth solid beneath endlessly darkened skies. He has names that have been sung in hymns, and made holy through prayer, and names that were excuses to spill blood.

“Gheim,” he says, eventually. An old name, unspoken for centuries.

“Gheim,” Thomas repeats. 

It sounds peculiar coming from his mouth, teeth and tongue moving in unexpected ways. Peculiar, but not distasteful. How odd that this man should be the one to give it life again. 

“I would shake your hand, sir,” Thomas adds, “but I’m afraid I’m quite unwell.” 

Gheim steps closer. Thomas’ lips have turned faintly blue, like ice newly-formed. It echoes the blue of his eyes but Gheim understands that as lovely as it is to him, it is cause for distress in Thomas and for some reason, that thought displeases him. 

“Would you accept my aid, Thomas?”

The man shivers violently at the sound of his name. Ah, Gheim thinks. Of course. All things here are borne of him—snow falls from his fingertips, ice spreads in his wake. Everything he gives voice to is made of the same essence, and though Thomas could not have understood what it meant when he offered Gheim his name, it was still a gift given freely. Surely that was reason enough to be kind.

“I apologise,” Gheim says. “It has been a long time since I’ve spoken with one of you. I will not speak your name again.”

Thomas gives him another strange look, one that Gheim does not understand. 

“How long has it been? Since you’ve spoken to—” Thomas falters. “A man?”

“He looked very different to you,” Gheim says. “Draped in wild things, in the skins and blood of the forest. He was my kin, in a way. He did not accept my aid.” Gheim gives Thomas a long, lingering look, drinking in the sight of his peculiar clothing and oddly hairless jaw. “My kin,” Gheim repeats, “in a way that you are not.”

“Yes,” Thomas acknowledges, glancing down at himself. “I must be a strange sight.”

“You have not answered my question.”

Thomas struggles to sit up. Gheim makes no move to help, not while he goes unanswered. 

“Are you able, though?” Thomas coughs weakly. “Are you able to help me?”

Gheim tilts his head again. How strangely these men spoke! Words obscuring other words, and others masking their meaning. It was little wonder they expected others to mimic their obfustications.

“Why would I offer if I could not?” 

Thomas tries to gesture at the forest but has difficulty lifting his arm. He’s no longer shivering but a certain lethargy has settled upon him, his movements slower and his eyes more clouded. 

“You said it yourself,” Thomas says, with some effort. “You are of this, of the snow and the trees and the ice. It’s beautiful,” he adds, and Gheim is surprised yet again, that a man could see beauty in something that causes him to suffer. “But it’s not what I’m in need of at the moment. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.” He coughs again, harder and longer this time, and when he stops it’s some time before he can speak again. “I thought perhaps you could only bring the cold.”

He meets Gheim’s eyes. Gheim sees apology there, but a spark of curiosity too, visible even through the torpor that threatens to overwhelm him. 

Gheim lifts a hand. 

“That which I bring,” he says, “I can also take away.” 

He gestures to Thomas’ head.

“Oh my,” Thomas whispers faintly. The snow on his eyelashes starts to melt, trickling down his face in rivulets like tears. “It—it’s so _warm_.”

“Will you answer my question now?”

“What?” Thomas blinks several times. “Oh!” he adds belatedly, when understanding clears his eyes. “Excuse me, sir—yes. Yes, please.”

“You accept my aid?” Gheim asks again, to be sure he understands correctly.

“Yes.” Thomas looks up at him, a new expression brightening his eyes now. Gheim thinks it may be what men called hope, but whatever it was, it chased away the dullness and made them look like fresh skies again, born anew after falls of snow and rain. “I accept your aid, Gheim. Most gratefully.”

Gheim gestures again, along the whole long length of Thomas’ lean body. 

“ _Oh_ ,” Thomas breathes. His eyes flutter closed, tension leaving his body as easily as the snow melts away from his clothes. He shifts, lifting his arms and stretching like the small cats that slumber in the hollows of Gheim’s trees. “Oh,” he murmurs. “This feels—”

Gheim’s gaze sharpens and immediately, Thomas’ eyes fly open in shock.

“Yes?” Gheim prompts, when Thomas leaves the sentence hanging in the air like a wisp of fog.

“You—” Thomas clears his throat. “I felt a stab of cold, like ice in my chest. When you were—as I was—”

Another perplexing jumble of words. Gheim frowns, trying to piece together the half-formed fragments of Thomas’ speech, reaching for words that fell away or never escaped his throat at all. How did men ever understand each other, Gheim wonders, when they kept so much locked away? They were as inscrutable and unpredictable as the ice floes he lacquers to the coldest seas.

“As you were stretching?” Gheim asks, as meaning slowly becomes clear. 

Thomas’ face heats up; Gheim can feel the change in the air. The blue tinge is gone from him, from skin as well as lips, replaced by a flush of sweet, hollyberry red. It suits him very well. 

“Y-yes,” Thomas says. “You were… watching me. And then I felt a sudden sharp coldness in my chest.”

“I enjoyed it,” Gheim says simply. “The sight of you.” He tilts his head, watching Thomas watch him, and wonders why the flush has become stronger. “Your pleasure brings me pleasure. And my pleasure is cold.”

Thomas looks away and takes a deep, shuddering breath.

“But the cold is not a comfort to you,” Gheim adds. “I understand.” He gestures again, more purposefully this time, slowly going over every single part of Thomas’ body to ensure he didn’t make another mistake. He trails warmth down the elegant line of Thomas' throat, lets it flow over the contours of his stomach and chest, sweeps it over the long stretch of his arms and legs and fingers.

Thomas is boneless under his attention, spread out on the forest floor in a pool of incongruous warmth. He makes small noises, of appreciation and need, and Gheim carefully commits these to memory as he gently chases the chill from Thomas’ bones. When Gheim is done, Thomas lays there for long minutes, panting hard and more flushed than ever. 

Eventually, Thomas stands. He looks at Gheim from under his eyelashes and offers a new kind of smile—somewhat uncertain, but happy all the same. Gheim decides he likes this one, too. It reminds him of unfurling leaves, of hidden things stirring but not yet ready to wake. 

“Thank you,” Thomas says. “You—you have saved my life, sir. Of that I have no doubt.”

Gheim inclines his head in acknowledgment. 

“Let me lead you out of the forest?” 

Thomas nods. “Please.” 

They walk in silence for a time, and Gheim is once more surprised to find that Thomas does not appear to mind it, occupied instead with looking around the forest with inquisitive, admiring eyes: at crystallised trees that glitter in the afternoon sun, at little streams and rivers frozen mid-flow.

“Why did he refuse your aid?” he asks at last. “The man you spoke of before.”

“He was returning.”

Thomas frowns. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

Gheim glances over. How much men have forgotten, he thinks, that such things need to be explained to them.

“He was returning,” Gheim repeats. “As you all do, in time. To me, or others like me.” He pauses, choosing his words with care. “You return, and we welcome you, embrace you and hold you close. You return to us and you rest, and this rest sustains us, and in time you wake again.” Gheim’s voice softens. “We wake together.”

Thomas is quiet for a moment.

“When you put it like that,” he says eventually, voice equally soft, “perhaps I should not have been so afraid when I got lost in your forest.”

Gheim thinks of how Thomas looked earlier, before he’d accepted his aid. Snow-skinned and ice-lipped, slowed and softened by the pervasive chill. How beautiful he’d been. How easily Gheim could have left him there and just admired from afar, until he too settled into Gheim's frozen embrace and rested there for a time. 

But he welcomes this unexpected diversion, this warm bright presence who looks at him with unguarded eyes. There is beauty in this too, Gheim thinks, in the pinks of his skin and the sun in his golden hair, in the sound of his steadily beating heart.

“No,” Gheim agrees. “Perhaps not. But I am glad you came, whatever path you took to get here. Accidentally or no.”

Something changes in Thomas’ expression, a flicker that’s not quite a smile and not quite a frown. But he says no more, and they continue their path through the trees in silence.

Eventually they come to edge of the forest. An endless expanse of white stretches out to the horizon but to the east there is a village, far enough away that his forest is undisturbed but close enough to see its slanted rooftops, dotted with chimneys gently billowing with smoke.

Thomas walks towards it, relief flooding his face, but stops abruptly when he realises that Gheim has stopped at the outermost tree. 

“Can you go no further?” he asks. 

“I can,” Gheim says. “But I won't.”

Thomas nods, accepting without question. He seems to hesitate, glancing back at the village before meeting Gheim’s eyes again. Then he squares his shoulders and clears his throat. 

“May I—” He takes a deep breath. “May I gift you with my gratitude, sir? To thank you for saving my life.”

Gheim frowns, puzzled. “You have said your thanks already.”

“No, I meant—” Thomas steps closer. “I meant, may I _show_ you my gratitude.”

Gheim nods, still somewhat bemused. How difficult it must be for them, he thinks, for words and thoughts to get so lost so often, lodged in one’s throat and heart and head. Frozen, like—

Like this, he thinks, when Thomas reaches up and cups his cheek, and his own thoughts briefly slow to a halt. Thomas steps closer still, until he leans forward and brings their mouths together—a brush of lips, a sweep of tongue, a dissonant clash of hot and cold. Frost forms wherever Gheim’s mouth touches, ice crystals spreading over Thomas’ lips and tongue and teeth, and snow falls into Thomas’ hair where Gheim runs his hands through it, knocking off the strange black hat. Thomas starts to shiver but he doesn’t pull away and Gheim thinks, with something like regret: he says this is gratitude, that this is a gift; but this is something else, too. 

This is a sacrifice, and it’s not one Gheim wishes to accept. Not yet.

He gently pushes Thomas away and takes a step back, into his forest. 

“The sun will set soon.” 

“Yes,” Thomas says, distracted, breathless. “I—yes.” He picks up his hat and dusts off the snow. His lips are swollen, ripe as winterberries. “Thank you,” he says again. “I—I wish there was some way I could repay you.” He stops and thinks for a moment. “Is there? Is there something you would ask of me?”

And Gheim looks at him, at his open unlined face, at the sincerity in his clear blue eyes, and says—

“Yes.”

“What?” Thomas asks, eager and relieved all at once. “What is it?” 

“I would have you return to me.” Thomas’ eyes widen. “When you are ready.” 

Thomas looks away. 

“But I—I will not not look as I do now.”

More obscuring words, more meanings to unravel. But this time, Gheim cannot make sense of them.

“I do not understand,” Gheim says, as gently as he can. 

Thomas touches his face, runs a hand through his hair. 

“We—that is, men—we... change, as we grow old. We become frail, our minds fade, our backs bend. When I return, I will no longer be—” 

Colour floods his face, but not as sweetly as before, and at last, Gheim understands.

“This tree,” he says, pressing a palm to the trunk of the sentinel that guards the very edge of his forest, “it changes each time I come for it. I take its green leaves and I burnish them, gold and bronze and copper. I let them fall, I keep its branches bare, I crown it with snow and ice.” Gheim reaches out, brushing a lock of hair from Thomas’ forehead. “Every time I come, it looks different. But I always know it’s the same tree.”

There is a long moment’s pause, wherein Thomas simply looks at him and Gheim simply waits. 

Finally, Thomas nods.

“Yes,” he says. “Yes, I’ll return to you.”

His voice is grave, solemn—understanding, perhaps, that these words had real consequences. Gheim feels something stir within him; a kind of longing, a kind of pride. What strange creatures these men were, with lives so fleeting but full of things that burned so bright.

Gheim inclines his head, accepting.

“I look forward to welcoming you,” he says, “when you are ready.”

Thomas looks back at the village before meeting Gheim’s eyes again. “Would you—I know I’ve no right to ask,” he says in a rush, “but would you do one last thing for me?”

“What is it?”

“Would you—” Thomas hesitates. “Would you say my name again? One last time.”

Gheim frowns. 

“It caused you discomfort, before.”

“Yes, but that was before you saved me. When I was still unwell. I—” He stops as his cheeks flush with colour, of sweet winter roses this time, newly blossomed in the snow. “I do believe I’ll quite enjoy it, now.”

Gheim smiles. 

“Very well.” 

He steps forward and reaches out, brushing Thomas’ lips with his fingertips. Snow dusts them white before the heat of Thomas’ skin melts it away again. 

“I thank you, Thomas,” he says, “for thanking me.” 

Thomas shivers as Gheim’s voice forms his name, but this shiver is accompanied by a small gasp of pleasure, and followed with a sweet, open smile. 

“Now go,” Gheim adds, offering him a smile of his own. “Before the sun sets and you find yourself at rest here before you are ready.”

Thomas opens his mouth to say something more but Gheim shakes his head. He lifts one hand and calls forth a western wind, gently pushing Thomas along and clearing a path for him through the snow.

Thomas gifts him with one last, lingering look before turning away and heading for the village. Gheim stays where he is, the sentinel tree at his back, watching as Thomas makes his way eastward. 

He pauses when he reaches the village border, turning around and raising a hand in farewell. Gheim knows Thomas is too far away to see him now but returns the gesture without hesitation, because it wasn’t the farewell that was important. 

It was that Thomas knew he’d still be there, watching.

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from the poem of the same name, by Thomas Campion.


End file.
